


You Spin Me Right Round

by a_gay_poster



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, Hanukkah, Humor, Jewish Sand Sibs, Kankuro's Questionable Adulting Abilities, M/M, Ugly Holiday Sweaters, Zoom Mishaps, quarantine fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:06:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28078173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_gay_poster/pseuds/a_gay_poster
Summary: Gaara is preparing to spend his first Hanukkah with his roommate-turned-boyfriend, Lee. And he's not going to let anything stand in the way of enjoying the holiday: not social distancing, not Lee's bad luck with frying oil, and not even Kankuro's ... shall we say,creativetake on the festivities.
Relationships: Gaara/Rock Lee, Nara Shikamaru/Temari
Comments: 23
Kudos: 70





	You Spin Me Right Round

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jessicamiriamdrew](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicamiriamdrew/gifts).



> Happy Hanukkah, Miriam! I hope you enjoy this little story I threw together. I was hoping to have this ready for the first night of Hanukkah, since that's when the story is set, but things, as ever, did not quite work out that way. Sorry for making you (unknowingly) fact-check your own gift. 
> 
> A couple of notes: I am not Jewish, so while I did my best to research the traditions included here, this is far from an accurate depiction of Jewish customs and I'm certain there are mistakes. This is also a totally Americanized modern AU, because I wasn't at all confident in my ability to find reliable resources on Judaism in Japan. Some setting and character choices may be familiar from my other Quarantine AU, [Six Feet of Separation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24216754), so you can kind of consider this an AU-of-an-AU. This story is set during present times, so there are themes of anxieties about the pandemic, but this is a very lighthearted fic overall. Many of the elements of this fic were inspired by Miriam's Hanukkah prompt lists, found [here](https://jessicamiriamdrew.tumblr.com/post/636343816664825856) and [here](https://jessicamiriamdrew.tumblr.com/post/180702530145).

The door slams closed with typical loudness, plastic bags crinkling and boots stomping in the entryway. 

“Brr!” 

“Lee?” Gaara calls from the kitchen situated in the back of their little rental home. As if anyone else would be trilling their lips in their doorway.

“Just a moment!” Lee hollers back. “Let me wash my hands and I’ll be right with you!” 

He does everything at top volume, from spraying disinfectant on his shoes, to dropping his mask in the washing machine (Gaara has no idea where Lee obtained a half-dozen bright-green custom masks printed with the word **BEAST** in neon orange, but he suspects Lee’s father had a hand in it … and probably has a matching set to boot), to scrubbing his hands up to their elbows in their single bathroom’s sink. It’s one of those things that Gaara found irritating at the beginning of their cohabitation, when they were merely roommates and nothing more, but which he now finds rather comforting. A reminder that Lee is always _there_ , as irrepressibly energetic and hot-blooded as ever.

_The honeymoon period,_ Temari calls it.

“You’ll start getting fed up with him eventually, and then you’ll be at each other’s throats,” she’d told Gaara last week on the phone, just after Gaara got finished explaining that he and Lee haven’t really had a proper argument, not yet. “Arguing is normal, okay? Don’t let it freak you out.”

Temari was no doubt thinking of her own husband, whom Gaara has overheard her snapping at over the phone far too many times to count, even before quarantine. Though it certainly doesn’t help that they have an infant sequestering with them. 

“Bickering is me and Shikamaru’s love language,” Temari assured Gaara, the one time he raised his concerns about it. 

And that seems true enough. Temari always has a sharp smile on her face when she’s snarking at her husband, and that dynamic appears to work for the both of them. 

Gaara can’t say it’s something he wants for himself, though. 

He much prefers Lee’s beaming smiles, his easy cheer and his frequent endearments. Being subject to such affection was jarring—overwhelming—at first, but Gaara has quite grown used to it. 

He’s already craving Lee’s hug as Lee’s footfalls pound down the narrow hallway. 

“Can you please pass me the disinfecting wipes?” Lee asks, setting the grocery bags down on the kitchen table, polite as ever. It’s another charm point of his, though Gaara enjoys even more the rare moments when he’s able to strip Lee of his ingrained formality.

He hasn’t been able to get Lee to curse—not yet—but he thinks it might just be a matter of time. And perhaps just a bit of strategic kissing. 

“Thank you!” Lee chirps as Gaara passes him the wipes. He sanitizes the bags with his usual efficiency, and then he’s tossing the wipe in the trash and sweeping Gaara up into a hug, pressing kisses to the top of his head. 

“I missed you,” he sighs, in between smacks of his lips in Gaara’s curls.

“You were only gone for an hour.”

“An hour too long!” He nuzzles the juncture of Gaara’s neck and shoulder, forcing him to stifle a laugh. 

“Did you get everything?” Gaara does not return the hug, only because he doesn’t want to get starch all over Lee’s tracksuit. There’s a pile of shredded potatoes on the kitchen counter, a box grater perched precariously atop them where Gaara dropped it, and Gaara’s fingers are slippery with their juice. 

“Hmm, I think so!” Lee releases Gaara and returns to his spoils, rifling through the bags and holding up each item as he names it. “I got gelt, powdered sugar, extra yeast, and …” He produces a jar and raises it in the air like a trophy. “Raspberry jelly! Seedless.” 

“Temari will be thrilled.” Gaara takes the jelly from him and sets it aside for later. “What’s that?”

“... Jelly?” Lee’s eyebrows furrow. “I just said.”

“No, what’s that still in the bag?”

“Oh!” More rustling, and then Lee is extracting a white plastic tub with an ominous blue label. “The lady at the store was so nice when she was helping me find the gelt. When I told her you were making latkes, she said we absolutely couldn’t eat them without sour cream!”

Gaara sneers. “You can put that straight in the garbage.”

Lee’s face falls. “But—”

“We’re not going to ruin my perfectly good latkes with _sour cream_.” Gaara nearly shudders. “Don’t be disgusting.” 

“I’m sorry.” Lee’s frown deepens, his chin wrinkling as the bow of his lips settles into a pout. “I didn’t realize. Is it not kosher?”

“Oh, it’s not treif.” Gaara turns back to his potatoes as Lee puts away the rest of the groceries. “It’s just repulsive.” 

“Sour cream tastes delicious on potatoes!” Lee remarks, shutting the cabinets. 

“Not these potatoes.” 

“If you say so.” Lee sounds dubious, but he lets the matter drop. “What do you still need help with? I can start heating up the oil.” 

“Absolutely not.” Gaara points to the blue tape on the floor around the range, where he’s clearly marked out a latke splash-zone. “Go sit at the table.”

Gaara does not, generally speaking, cook. In fact, he knows exactly two recipes: the two that he plans to make today, and which he has made for every Hanukkah since he was tall enough to reach the stovetop. He unearthed them from his mother’s recipe books when he was still a child, and devoted enough hours (and inches of oil-splattered skin) to their perfection that the notion of learning to cook _more_ things seemed an insurmountable hardship. 

Besides, frying food is easy. There’s very little fiddling. You make the oil hot, you lower the food in, you wait for it to get brown, you flip it, you pull it out. Practically idiot-proof.

Except, of course, for the particularly cheerful idiot beaming at Gaara now from the other side of the kitchen counter. 

Lee is actually quite a skilled cook, but his health-nut proclivities mean that _deep frying_ is not within his repertoire. The last time Gaara suggested they have katsudon for dinner, so much smoke came pouring out of the kitchen window that a neighbor called the fire department. And Lee ended the ordeal crumpled on the kitchen floor, sobbing like he’d chopped an entire bag of onions. 

So Gaara is the only one allowed to commandeer the frying oil, while Lee is consigned to sous chef status for the day. 

“The sufganiyot dough should almost be done rising,” Gaara tells him. “Show me?”

Lee holds up the glass bowl for Gaara’s inspection. The dough is nicely risen, nearly touching the layer of plastic wrapped around it. 

“Good. Roll that out and you can start cutting it. I set up a baking sheet for you.” 

“Right!” 

They fall into a companionable silence, punctuated only by the hiss of latkes submerging in hot oil and Lee’s occasional sneezes as the flour coating the table powders his nose.

* * *

“Got the keys?”

“Yes!” 

Gaara hardly needed ask. Lee is standing in the doorway bouncing so hard with his excitement that the keyring on his pinky is jingling madly. His mask—neon pink today and patterned with white flowers that Gaara thinks might be lotuses— is dangling from one ear. Gaara supposes that must be the other advantage of Lee’s protruding ears, aside from the fact that they make a convenient handhold. 

Lee snatches up all the bags from the table before Gaara can offer to grab them, leaving Gaara feeling slightly awkward and useless as he trails his boyfriend to his raggedy little green coupe. Lee pops the trunk with a foot and sets about arranging everything with extreme care. 

“You don’t think it will slide around too much?” he asks, turning to seek Gaara’s approval.

“I don’t think those weights are going anywhere.” Lee’s trunk is loaded down with so many dumbbells and barbells it’s a miracle his tires haven’t gone flat. “As long as you don’t take any corners too hard.”

Lee gasps as if scandalized. “I would never! Not when I have such precious cargo along for the ride!” 

For as reckless as Lee is with his own physical safety, when Gaara is in the car he drives like somebody’s grandmother. It’s genuinely adorable. If they so much as hit a stop slightly too hard, Lee always throws his arm across Gaara’s chest. 

Gaara goes up on his tiptoes to press a kiss to Lee’s cheek. 

“Only joking,” he reminds Lee, whose cheeks have gone pink under the attention. “Have we got everything?” 

His anxiety won’t let him pull out of the driveway without double-checking, although he already went through the bags twice back in the house. He pulls out his phone and navigates to his checklist, just one among the several dozen he uses to keep his life feeling manageable. 

“Two plates of latkes?” he asks, thumbing through the list. 

There’s the sound of crumpling plastic as Lee digs through the bags. It’s kind of him, to be so indulgent. 

“Check!”

“Three tupperware of sufganiyot?” 

“Two regular and one seedless!” 

Lee lifts up the one for Temari in demonstration. It’s labeled with masking tape in Lee’s tidy handwriting, because Gaara’s scrawl has only gotten more illegible since he stopped having to take notes by hand in high school. 

“Extra candles for Kankuro because he always forgets to buy them until it’s too late?”

“Check!” 

“All right.” Gaara rolls his shoulders and takes a deep, preparatory breath. “Let’s roll.” 

The benefit of not being able to drive is that Gaara gets control of the aux cable while they wind their way through the crowded streets to Kankuro’s downtown apartment. He switches the input and fiddles with the dial. Lee has yet to graduate to a digital music library, still listening to the same CDs he owned in high school, and his car is so old that the only way to play music off a phone is to plug it into the cigarette lighter and pray there’s at least one station playing radio static. The static, found, hums, and Gaara clicks on his instrumental playlist. Music fills the car over the scrape of the rattling old heater, and Gaara tries to pace his breathing to it, willing himself calm. 

He hates leaving the house these days, even moreso than usual. Lee runs most of the errands for their household, which has allowed Gaara to sink even further into avoidant complacency. This level of panic is not adaptive, he reminds himself, staring through the window at a bus stop crowded with unmasked people in their winter coats. Even under lockdown, the city’s roads are thronging with cars. It’s cold enough that the roads have frosted over crisply, but there’s no snow on the ground just yet. People are, predictably, driving like assholes. 

“Oh for goodness’ sake!” Lee shouts, stomping the brake as a sportscar zips out of its parking spot to cut them off. That’s about the closest he ever comes to swearing. He turns to Gaara with a look of pained worry, retrieving his arm from the passenger’s side where it’s made a cushion for Gaara’s chest. “Are you all right?”

“Yesss,” Gaara wheezes, fingers around the comforting rattle of the pill bottle in his pocket. He won’t take them, not until their errands are done and Lee is driving them back home, when he can curl up in the passenger seat and let himself drift in their fog. “You should take that spot before someone else grabs it.”

“Right!” Lee parallel parks with a machinist’s precision—impressive, to Gaara, who failed that portion of his driving test no fewer than four times before giving up and resigning himself to being a lifelong bus-rider—and goes to retrieve the bag from the trunk.

“All intact!” Lee announces, holding it over his head like a trophy. 

Gaara is still very deliberately hooking his mask over his ears and checking for gaps in the rearview mirror.

“You know, I’m actually pretty nervous myself,” Lee relays, jogging from one foot to the other in Gaara’s wake as they make their way down the dimly lit stairwell of Kankuro’s building. Kankuro lives in a basement unit, and the concrete underground reeks of mildew, scattered with trash and cigarette butts. There’s a caricature graffitied on one wall of what appears to be a man giving himself a blowjob. The art-style looks suspiciously like Gaara’s brother’s own. 

“What are you nervous for?” Gaara asks. Lee has come closer, and Gaara can feel the puffs of his warm breath on the back of his bare neck. He regrets not bringing a scarf. 

“I haven’t seen your siblings in person since they helped you move in!” 

They reach the landing of Kankuro’s floor, and Gaara looks back and forth trying to remember which direction his apartment number is in. It’s been quite a while since Gaara visited. They have most family gatherings at Temari’s for obvious reasons.

“This isn’t technically _in person,_ ” he reminds Lee, but Lee continues to radiate pent-up energy behind him, stomping his feet and rubbing his gloved hands dramatically. 

Outside Kankuro’s door, he sets down a plastic bag, knocks hard on the door, and sprints back up the dingy hallway as fast as his skinny legs can carry him. Lee is giggling like a madman behind him, eyes all crinkled above his mask. Gaara doesn’t want to touch the banister of the stairs to hold himself up as he pants, so he grabs Lee’s muscled arms for stability instead. 

There’s the muffled sound of barking, and then Kankuro’s door creaks open, spilling the noise into the hallway to echo.

“Down, Akamaru! Down!” There’s a scuffling noise before Kankuro’s poking his face around the doorframe, one hand in the collar of his roommate’s massive white dog. It took less cajoling than Gaara expected to get him to agree to wear a mask for the drop-off, and all that’s visible of him is two sleep-bleary eyes, the rest of him covered by a hoodie and sweatpants. His mask has a grinning purple skeleton’s mouth on it. “Chill, dude, it’s just Gaara.” 

Akamaru continues to lunge against Kankuro’s grip, barking all the while. 

“Sorry!” Kankuro yells down the hall. “He’s pissed ‘cause he can’t sniff your butts!” 

“Be sure to wipe those off,” Gaara calls back, as Kankuro stoops to grab the bag from the doorway. 

“Meh, you guys are the most careful people I know. If anyone doesn’t have it—”

“Kankuro,” Gaara snaps warningly.

Kankuro gestures as if to throw his hands up, although both are occupied between the food and the dog. “Joking! Joking! I’ll sanitize it so hard the matzah will dissolve right out of the latkes.”

“Please don’t do that either!” Lee shouts. “Gaara worked very hard on those!” 

Kankuro rolls his eyes. 

Gaara is starting to get antsy standing out here, feeling very exposed. One of Kankuro’s neighbors could be home any moment, and then they’d have to pass each other on the narrow stairs. He elbows Lee gently in the stomach, and Lee shoots him a knowing look. 

“We have to go!” Lee announces. “So we can get to Temari’s house and back before sundown!” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Kankuro gestures them on with an indifferent wave of his hand. “Don’t get all worked up on my account. See ya tonight, squirt.” 

“See you,” Gaara replies, all in a rush, before dashing up the stairs. 

“Oh, shit, extra candles!” Kankuro’s voice follows him up. “Thanks!” 

Lee has to take the phone from him once they’re back in the car, Gaara slathering his arms up to his elbows in sanitizer though he hasn’t touched anything but Kankuro’s door. Temari’s house is quite a bit further out, in the bewildering sameness of the suburbs where it’s easy to get turned around. Gaara’s been to her house more recently than Kankuro’s, but before lockdown it was always Kankuro who picked him up for their weekly dinners, and even if pressed, Gaara could not tell Lee whether it’s a left on Maple, Elm, or Oak. So it’s the GPS’s mechanical, neutrally feminine voice that guides them through the little tree-lined streets. 

Temari’s house is at the end of a cul-de-sac, the only on the street that’s conspicuously undecorated. Her neighbor’s homes have been emblazoned with string lights and blow-up Santas since before Thanksgiving, apparently, much to Temari’s irritation. 

There’s a little old man up the block pushing a lawnmower in his perfectly manicured yard, but other than that, nobody seems to be out and about. Despite the apparent lack of habitation, Gaara finds himself feeling more uncomfortable as he carries the bags up Temari’s front walk. Unlike Kankuro’s dank little basement or his and Lee’s cozy, ramshackle rental, he doesn’t feel like he _belongs_ here. Temari’s always complaining about the sterility of the neighborhood, saying she wants to move out to the country and start up a farm, but their current home was reasonably priced, and it’s situated squarely between her and Shikamaru’s workplaces. 

Not that she or Shikamaru are traveling to the office much these days. 

Climbing the steps up to the porch, Gaara gets the prickling sense on the back of his neck of being stared at.

When he turns around, though, the little old man is pushing his mower up the driveway, and not so much as a curtain flickers in any of the neighbors’ windows.

“Are you going to knock?” Lee stage-whispers in his ear. 

“Yes.” Gaara sets down the bags and knocks, and then he and Lee are scurrying right back up the cobblestones to hover by the car’s open doors. Even Lee seems aware of the neighborhood’s tension. There is no laughter, this time, and they stand carefully apart from each other, not brushing so much as their pinkies together. 

Temari steps onto the porch looking rather rumpled and careworn, still in her bathrobe and slippers. She has Shikadai clutched to her chest, his little feet in their booties dangling over one arm. 

“Thank you,” she cups her hand around her covered mouth to call, raising one of Shikadai’s chubby hands with her fingers to mock a wave. “Man, I’ve been looking forward to these for the past month.” 

“Yours are the ones with the tape on them,” Gaara advises. 

“You’re a peach.” Standing there on the porch, she tugs her mask beneath her nose and pops a tupperware to sniff. “They smell amazing.”

“Temari!” The word rips from Gaara’s throat as a screech.

“Oh, chill out, will ya?” She closes the container and sticks it back into the bag, slinging the plastic handles over her elbow. “I’m not gonna breathe on you.” 

“I think Gaara would prefer if you sanitized the containers before you touch them,” Lee says, his voice a bit tight.

“What are you, the virus police?” Temari tosses her head, but it has no effect; her hair is so frizzy and stiff that it hardly moves from her ponytail. “I haven’t even been to the gas station in a month. Mr. Worrywart back there has me on lockdown.” She nods back into the house, where presumably Shikamaru Nara-née-Worrywart is waiting. 

“Good.” Gaara crosses his arms. She won’t be getting any sympathy out of him. “You can’t afford to get sick with a baby.”

“You think I don’t know that?” One blond eyebrow arches. “I swear, I thought _I_ was supposed to be the mama bear here.” 

“Well someone has to be,” Gaara replies tartly. “If you won’t.” 

“All right, all right.” She laughs, sharp and melodic. “I promise, I’m gonna go inside and clean the tupperware off and then I’m gonna wash my hands _very thoroughly_. I’ll even video-call you so you can supervise, if that’ll make you feel better.” 

“That won’t be necessary.” 

“If you’re sure.” 

A little chime sounds from the phone in Gaara’s pocket—his medication reminder—and he startles, unable to deaden it until he’s back in the car with clean hands.

“I, uh—”

“Go on, then.” Temari gestures, adjusting Shikadai as she hefts the bags higher in her arms. “I’ll see you tonight. Drive safe.”

“Lee is very safe,” Gaara reminds her.

Her eyes soften, the wrinkles at their corners obvious in the late afternoon sun. 

“I know,” she says, turning her attention to Lee. “Thank you for taking care of him.” 

“It’s my pleasure!” 

The ride back is quiet, Gaara’s forehead steaming up the cool window and the cabin smelling of rubbing alcohol, sedative making his loud thoughts quiet. 

If he’s upset, he tries not to show it. 

It’s just that he hasn’t held Shikadai since just after he was born, and he’s gotten so _big_ in the meantime. Gaara and his siblings aren’t the most physically affectionate bunch, but right now all he wants is to throw them all in a group embrace, to smell his nephew’s hair before the baby smell is all grown off him. 

A noise comes out of his throat that he didn’t mean to release. 

Lee’s broad hand finds his knee and squeezes.

* * *

“Temari, I think you’re on mute.” 

A click, the staticky screech of a microphone.

“Can you hear me now?”

“Yes!”

“Yeah.”

“We can hear you.” 

“Okay, great.” 

On Gaara’s computer screen are two fuzzy videos, side-by-side: Kankuro’s dim bedroom on the left, with its beach towel curtains and its swarms of action figures decorating the shelves; and Temari’s warmly lit family room on the right, her husband and baby in the background in front of her tasteful cloth _Happy Hanukkah_ banner. 

“Shikamaru said he’d judge the sweater contest,” Temari leans in close to her mic to say, her image distorting and pixelating as the bandwidth drops. “I figured we needed a neutral gentile as our judge.” 

Shikamaru isn’t just a gentile; he’s so devoutly atheist that Gaara suspects he may have a fedora or two in the back of his closet. 

“Lee’s a gentile,” Gaara reminds her.

“Chyeah, but he’s biased,” Kankuro drawls. His voice comes through crisp and clear, courtesy of the massive gaming headset perched atop his head, its microphone like a fat insect hovering in front of his mouth. 

Gaara turns his head just as Lee leans over the back of his computer chair and presses a kiss to his temple. 

“Only ever in your favor,” he murmurs to Gaara’s hair, hopefully not loud enough for Gaara’s siblings to hear.

“Haha,” Kankuro says, and Gaara’s shoulders slump in defeat. “You’re in _love._ How embarrassing for you.” 

“As I was saying.” Temari smirks. “Honey, get over here.” 

Shikamaru approaches the camera, stooping down to squint at the screen. 

“Chag Chanukah sameach, you guys,” he says, butchering the _ch_ sounds as he always does. He holds Shikadai up to the webcam and waves his pudgy fist, though the baby seems utterly unaware that there is anyone watching him from the other side of the screen, turning his head instead to look at his mother’s face and babbling a string of babyish nonsense. 

“Chag Chanukah sameach, Shikadai,” Kankuro practically coos. “Lookin’ cute, lil’ man!” 

“This is our second attempt at a Hanukkah outfit.” Temari hoists her son higher for inspection. He’s wearing a striped onesie with some sort of dinosaur on the front, its back decorated with candles. Printed below it in blocky text is the word, **Menorasaurus**. “Plan A got caught in the crossfire of a poop-and-spit-up disaster.” 

“Lovely,” Gaara says, voice flat. “Very appetizing.” 

“You’ll get over it by the time the candles are lit.” Temari waves him off. “Anyway, who’s going first?” 

“You can go.”

Temari stands and takes a few steps back from the camera, doing a full 360-degree spin for her brothers’ appraisal. She really has not met the ‘ugly sweater’ brief at all. Her turtleneck is downright tasteful, a handsome dark blue patterned with alternating dreidels, candles, and stars of David in white and silver thread. Her skirt’s hem glitters and flutters when she spins, and Shikadai burbles and claps in delight at the display. 

“Boo!” Kankuro hollers into his microphone. “Hiss! You suck at ugliness!” 

“Thanks.” Temari rolls her eyes as she sits back down and readjusts her camera. “Let’s see you do one better.”

“No way.” Kankuro thumps his chest. He’s wearing a black hoodie to conceal whatever’s underneath, zipped up practically to his chin. “Saving the best for last.”

“What a pain in the ass,” Shikamaru mutters, under his breath but still loud enough to be heard. “Gaara, you go.”

“Fine.” Gaara sighs a bone-weary sigh, standing and beckoning Lee over to him. Lee rolls his sleeves down—he’s always run hot, even with the window open. Gaara does a quick once-over of the camera’s framing on the little thumbnail in the corner of his screen, then he stands straight upright, taking Lee’s hand. Lee copies his pose, and slowly they raise their arms over their heads. Their matching sweaters are geometrically patterned and at first blush appear rather secular, but when they stand in precisely this configuration, the fabric of their sleeves beneath their joined hands makes the shape of a Hanukkiah, the triangles on their chests forming an abstract star of David. 

“Clever,” Shikamaru remarks, as Gaara resumes sitting, Lee propping his face in his hands along the back of the chair and tilting its seat back. 

“More like _disgustingly adorable,_ ” Temari adds. “All right, Kankuro. Your time to shine.” 

“Fuck yeah!” Kankuro scrambles to his feet, and for a moment all that can be seen on the screen is his very expensive gaming chair skidding backwards to collide with his bed. Then the lights flicker on, casting the room in fluorescent. There’s a very concerning dark stain splashed across the far wall, and Gaara sees Temari’s pixelated eyebrows raise just as he feels his own creeping towards his hairline. 

Kankuro rushes back into frame with a tremendous rustling noise, like a thousand crepe paper streamers crying out in pain. He pauses for a moment, checking to be sure all eyes are on him, and then he spreads his arms wide, taking on a dramatic pose. 

He is wearing what must be, by far, the _ugliest_ Hanukkah sweater Gaara has ever seen in his short life. Kankuro has sewn lines of tinsel all along the front of the garish blue garment, a central column of it up his chest and four strands of it attached from the side of the sweater to each arm. The effect is that he has transformed himself into a massive, gaudy human menorah. As his family watches in horror, he sets a plastic headband atop his head and, of a moment, it lights up, followed by a glowing sequence of flashing lights along the top of each tinsel candelabrum arm, left to right, as if it were the eighth night. 

He returns to his chair and jams his headset back on just as Shikamaru starts up an awed slow clap.

“Wow,” he says, in a tone as genuine as his sarcastic voice ever takes. “Just wow.” 

“Pretty impressive, right?” Kankuro leers into the camera’s lens. “Just wait ‘til you see what I’ve got planned for the candle lighting!” 

“There’s more?” Temari pinches the bridge of her nose. 

“Of course there’s more! What’s the point of a holiday if you don’t overdo it?” 

“That’s most impressive, Kankuro!” Lee squawks, his chin resting now on the top of Gaara’s head to better see the screen. “Did you make that yourself?”

“Sure did.” Kankuro puffs his chest. 

“All right,” Temari cuts off Kankuro’s boasting. “It’s getting late.” She cocks her head to look back at Shikamaru. “So, who won?” 

“Hmm.” Shikamaru drums his goateed chin as if deep in thought. “Well, definite points for the cute couples’ get-up, and of course my lovely wife looks beautiful as always.” He busses a kiss to the top of Temari’s head, ignoring the spectacularly unimpressed look she gives him. “But I think the obvious winner is …” 

Kankuro rocks back in his chair, a cocky smirk playing across his lips.

“This little guy right here.” Shikamaru hefts Shikadai back into his arms, twisting him to and fro so his chunky little legs swing in front of the camera. 

“So much for _unbiased_!” Kankuro cries. 

Shikamaru shrugs. “Sorry.”

“Can’t believe we’re givin’ out participation trophies to brats too young to even understand the concept of winning.” Kankuro’s lip juts in a pout. “This is why the younger generation is growin’ up soft, y’know.” 

“Watch who you call a brat, _brat_ ,” Temari says hotly.

“Welp, it’s this brat’s bedtime, so I’m gonna go put him down for the night.” Shikamaru stands to his full height, adjusting Shikadai in his arms. “Say night-night to mommy.” He holds his son down for Temari to kiss him on the cheek. 

“Say ‘Chag Chanukah sameach’ to Uncle Kankuro and Uncle Gaara,” Temari tells Shikadai, her lips pursed and her voice gone saccharine sweet.

“Buh!” Shikadai grabs aimlessly for Temari’s hair and blows a spectacular spit bubble. 

It is, naturally, the cutest thing Gaara has ever seen. 

“Aww,” he hears Lee breathe, and without turning he knows his boyfriend is clutching his heart, tears springing to his eyes. 

“Good seein’ ya guys,” Shikamaru calls over his shoulder, just before he wanders out of frame, bouncing the baby all the while. 

A door shuts somewhere in the distance, and then Temari’s craning her neck to look to her right. 

“Can’t see shit with all these stupid Christmas lights,” she grouses. “Gaara, are the stars out over at your place?” 

Gaara’s eyes flick to the window, the curtains thrown wide and the glass just barely cracked to let in a pleasant curl of the cold night air. The heater is on inside to keep them warm, which is a waste of gas that he can’t bring himself to care about just now, cozy in his sweater and the thick wool socks Lee bought him for their six-month anniversary.

Perhaps not the most traditionally romantic gift, but a very _Lee_ one. Because he’d noticed Gaara’s toes always got cold, and that Gaara ended up tucking them under Lee’s thigh whenever they sat together on the couch. Not that the addition of socks had stopped Gaara from doing that. He likes the pressure, and he likes even more being able to pinch Lee with his toes to get a rise out of him. 

“Mm, yeah,” he says, remembering that he’s on camera at the very last moment before he ends up reaching behind himself to goose his boyfriend just-because. “The stars are out now.”

The sky outside the window is the velvet blue of recent sunset. The sky is almost cloudless, tonight, just little wisps of white like stretched-out cotton batting scattering its backdrop. Over the treetops that line their tiny patch of scrub-grass backyard, the very first lights are just starting to twinkle in the night sky.

“Okay.” Temari smiles, her voice gone a little soft. “Let’s get started.”

Gaara pushes his laptop back so that his siblings can see his Hanukkiah on its foil lining on his desk. His is shaped like an eight-armed saguaro cactus, a ceramic piece he’d stumbled across in a thrift store when he was shopping for cardigans during his undergraduate degree, and which he hadn’t been able to resist buying. It was the very first thing he put up in his first apartment after he moved out, even before the mezuzah he’d nailed to the doorframe, a sign that his new home was properly _his_.

On the right side of the screen, Temari is adjusting a slender-armed silver Hanukkiah, polished to a burnished shine. Her menorah is their mother’s, and, aside from her cookbooks and a few pieces of jewelry that Temari also now owns, it’s one of the few heirlooms their father hadn’t gotten rid of after her death. Like the memories were too painful or like he wished she had never existed. Wished _they_ had never existed, his wife and his children both. 

Gaara has long since given up trying to plumb the depths of a dead man’s psyche. 

Watching Temari shake a long white candle from its paper wrapper now, he wishes with a pang that he was there with her. With them. With his _family_ , the one he fought for and chose himself, celebrating the holiday.

But he supposes this will have to do for now. At least they’ve managed to be together in some way, and a virtual menorah-lighting is still a menorah-lighting, for all the technological hiccups and unwelcome surprises. 

And speaking of surprises, on the left side of the screen, Kankuro is pulling out …

“What on _earth_ is that thing?” Temari asks, mouth agape.

“Superhero Hanukkiah!” Kankuro announces, holding up the wood-and-plastic monstrosity for all assembled to see. All along the length of what appears to be a painted strip of plywood, Kankuro has glued down nine action figures, their hands outstretched and secured with rubber-bands to make candleholders. “I got one of every Jewish superhero—Spider-man, Iceman, Superman, Kitty Pryde, Harley Quinn … just like Noah’s ark!” 

“That is absolutely not how the story of Noah’s ark goes,” says Gaara.

Kankuro just shrugs. “Meh, close enough. Anyway, you wouldn’t believe what a pain it was to get everyone the exact same height! Swear I was sitting here with a level, chiseling little blocks of wood for ages.”

“Who’s that in the middle?” Lee asks, peering over Gaara’s head.

Kankuro splutters. “Uh, that’s Wiccan, _duh!_ ”

“There’s a Jewish superhero named _Wiccan?_ ” 

Kankuro ignores Temari’s interjection to spit questions at Lee. “Gaara didn’t mention him? I mailed him all my Young Avengers trade paperbacks like a month ago.”

“I haven’t read them yet,” Gaara says, without the slightest hint of emotion. “I’ve been busy.”

He prefers his stories unillustrated. Or, better yet, in non-fiction form entirely. Nature documentaries are much more his speed. 

“ _Gaara!_ He’s one of the first ever openly gay mainstream comic heroes! I thought you’d like him! His boyfriend’s giant and buff and _green_!” 

Gaara quirks an eyebrow, but otherwise does not betray his intrigue.

“I’m sure I’ll get to them eventually.”

“Are we going to spend all night bickering about Kankuro’s latest creative offense against Rabbinical law,” Temari interrupts, “or are we going to actually light these damn things before midnight?”

“Um,” Lee pipes up. “I have to teach my Zoom yoga class at five tomorrow morning.”

Kankuro heaves a sigh that could rival one of Shikamaru’s for its beleaguredness. “Fine, fine.”

“Okay,” Temari holds up a lighter in one hand and holds the shamash candle steady with the other. “Three, two, one …” 

She touches the lighter’s tip to the candle’s wick. On his end of their staticky connection, Gaara does the same.

Just as Temari draws breath to begin reciting the first of the night’s three blessings, Kankuro cries, “Wait!” 

Gaara’s gaze flicks from the candle already beginning to drip wax in his fingers to his brother’s face on the computer screen. Kankuro’s grin is wide and wicked. 

“If everyone’s ready, I can show you my final surprise!” 

“Oh no,” Gaara says, tone underlain with dread. 

“Oh _yes_.” Kankuro fumbles with something under his desk, and then holds up a black plastic box with an antenna attached.

It sort of reminds Gaara of the controllers for old RC cars. Moments later, his supposition proves to be not quite so far off. 

“Introducing,” Kankuro intones theatrically, flipping a switch and fiddling with a little joystick, “the Menorahbot 5-point-0!” 

Out from under Kankuro’s desk comes rolling something Gaara does not know how to describe in words. It sort of resembles a Roomba, if Roombas were painted with blue and silver racing stripes, and if they had muscular, animatronic arms and a pyrotechnic, sparking protrusion that looked like a Roman candle. 

On her half of the screen, Temari’s mouth is open, but all that’s coming out is choked, stifled noises of outrage.

“He’s going to burn his apartment down,” Lee breathes. 

Gaara, for his part, cannot so much as utter a sound. Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the whole display is the implication that there were at least four more failed precursors to the Frankenstein-ian creation presently lumbering across the screen. 

The Menorahbot trundles its way across Kankuro’s filthy bedroom floor, brandishing the sparkler like a weapon and yet somehow managing to avoid every pile of dirty underwear and stack of plastic video game cases. 

Kankuro dashes across the screen to set his demented-looking Hanukkiah in front of the thing, and with a look of deranged delight, steers it right over to the shamash clutched in Wiccan’s plastic, outstretched hands. 

There’s a mechanical whirr as the robot’s arm flexes, and Gaara’s heart is in his throat as his brother navigates the sparking projectile down to the candle’s wick. 

A held breath, and then …

It lights. 

Gaara whispers a blessing under his breath and then raises his voice to say, “Great use of your three-quarters of an electrical engineering degree.” 

Gaara only means it half-sarcastically. As far as quarter life crises and rebellions against one’s parents go, Kankuro’s choices have still somehow managed to be less offensive to their now-deceased father’s sensibilities than any of Gaara’s. Kankuro had dropped out of college in his junior year to go follow the Gathering of the Juggalos, and then, upon discovering them to be, as he put it, “too religious, in a weird way,” had then proceeded to attempt to join the circus before finally settling in at the community theater in their hometown, although in present circumstances that has been shuttered for going on six months. And idle hands do seem to turn his brother towards terrible works. 

“Yeah, well, I’ve had plenty of time, sittin’ around on unemployment,” Kankuro affirms, as if he’s been listening to Gaara’s internal monologue all along. 

On the screen, he’s preening like a peacock, practically strutting as the Menorahbot douses its firework-cum-lighter in a cup of something unidentified on his floor. 

Temari rubs the bridge of her nose once more and utters something so rude that Gaara’s grateful that Lee doesn’t understand Yiddish. 

“I am,” she says, muffled behind the palm of her hand, “ _very_ sure that that was not kosher.”

* * *

“These sufganiyot are hella good, by the way,” Kankuro says, through a mouthful of crumbs. 

“Lee helped make them,” Gaara tells him. 

“Huh. Explains the shape. Not exactly traditional, y’know, Bowl Cut.” 

Lee is sitting on the arm of the computer chair now, and Gaara watches a pink flush climb the column of his neck by the mixture of the candlelight and the computer screen’s blue glow. 

“I’m sorry!” he cries. “I didn’t realize—!”

Gaara lays a hand on his knee. “It’s my fault. I didn’t tell him to use a drinking glass to cut them.” 

“The pizza cutter was right there!” 

“No skin off my nose.” Kankuro wipes a bit of jelly from the corner of his mouth with the sleeve of his sweater, and then, in a stunning display of bad manners, sucks it off the fabric. “Rectangles taste the same as circles to me.” 

“Gaara, your spin,” Temari reminds him. 

“Sorry.”

Gaara returns his attention to the dreidel on his desk, spins it, and waits patiently for it to fall.

“Gimel.”

“What?” Kankuro groans. “There’s no way! That’s like your fifth gimel in a row. No one guy can be that lucky!” 

Gaara merely shrugs, unwrapping another piece of gelt and popping it in his mouth. They’ve had to slightly adapt the rules of the game given that they can’t have a shared pot, and under their new structure, gimel means the person spinning gets to eat two pieces of gelt. 

Gaara _really_ likes gelt. They’re the one Hanukkah treat that he doesn’t have to put any effort into creating. 

And what his siblings don’t know won’t hurt them.

Temari narrows her eyes, leaning in towards the screen.

“Say, Lee,” she says, voice heavy with suspicion. “What symbol is facing up on Gaara’s dreidel right now?” 

“Um.” Lee braces himself on Gaara’s shoulder to look down at the desk surface. “What’s the one that looks like a _W_ , again?” 

“Shin!” Temari gasps theatrically. “Gaara, you little cheat!” 

“That’s it!” Kankuro thunders. “No more Mr. Nice Dreidel. Honor system’s over. Point your webcam at the desk right now, or else!”

“Or else what?” Gaara crosses his arms in challenge. “What could you possibly do to me from all the way over there?” 

Kankuro leaps to his feet, sending his chair spinning across the floor once more.

“Listen here, you little punk.” He begins rolling up his sleeves, as if the sight of his sad, pasty gamer forearms might intimidate anyone. “Just because it’s the Festival of Lights doesn’t mean I won’t knock _your_ lights—”

“Kankuro!” Temari shouts.

“Aw, chill out, I’m just messin’—”

“No!” And her voice this time is so shrill that even Lee freezes, his hand stilling where he’s begun rubbing Gaara’s shoulders. “Is that smoke?”

“Huh?” Kankuro turns to look behind himself, bewildered. “Oh, fuck—!”

Kankuro throws himself backwards. There’s a clatter, a crash, and then Kankuro’s entire camera set up is tumbling sideways onto the ground, the image flickering and streaking. Kankuro’s black hoodie drops to the floor, obscuring half the camera’s view, and for a moment all that can be seen is the spinning wheel of his rolling chair. 

Then there’s the thundering of footsteps, panting breaths, and a splash. 

Moments later, Kankuro’s sweat streaked face is peering back into the camera’s lens. 

It’s only upon seeing his face unharmed that Gaara’s heart starts beating again. 

It takes Kankuro some moments to adjust everything back upright, plugging his headset back in and picking his webcam up in his hand.

“Uh, sorry about that,” he says, looking rather chagrined. “Turns out Iceman’s not quite as fireproof as I thought.”

He turns the camera around, showing the devastation wrought upon his bookshelf. In an ashen pile of water lies smoldering the remains of a half-melted action figure, cast in waxed agony. The other eight heroes are in no better shape, knocked from their wooden pedestals and splayed with their little plastic limbs akimbo.

“Lucky that Akamaru was home.” The image flickers and shifts abruptly, and then it’s focused on Kankuro’s roommate’s massive white hound, sitting in the bedroom doorway with a bucket’s handle in his mouth, tail thumping the floor. “Swear, that mutt’s smarter than most people.”

“Certainly smarter than you,” Temari agrees. “He brought you water?”

“Yeah, he’s really well trained.” Kankuro turns the camera once more, and Gaara gets a close-up of the underside of his brother’s nostrils before he remembers to hold it above his head. “And, uh, Kiba falls asleep when he’s smoking sometimes.” 

“Not cigarettes, I assume,” Temari says drily.

There’s a moment of silence, and then a stifled gasp from Lee.

“Wait,” he hisses into Gaara’s ear, far too loud to properly be called a whisper. “Does she mean … _jazz_ cigarettes? That is so unhealthy!” 

“Holy shit,” Kankuro guffaws. “Were you born in the nineteen fifties?” 

Temari clears her throat, and everyone else goes silent. 

“As thrilling as all this has been,” she says, in the same voice she used to affect as a teenager, when their father went on business trips and left her in charge, “I do have a baby asleep upstairs. So I think that’s quite enough Hanukkah for one night.” 

Gaara has to agree. And although he misses sharing the holiday with his siblings, he is grateful that at least he doesn’t have to share with them the scent of melted plastic and burnt anime figurines.

* * *

Gaara falls asleep that night wrapped around Lee’s broad back, and wakes up with his arms and chest quite cold. The chill air from the open window has settled all around the bed, and there’s a dent left in the mattress, still warm from Lee’s absent body. 

Distantly, he hears the muffled creak of the refrigerator door opening, sees the panel of its light spreading out into the hallway from the kitchen. 

He fumbles around in the dark for his socks and only manages to find one before he shuts the window and pads across the tile floor. 

Lee is standing in the open fridge door in his boxers, haloed in its light. His shiny hair is all stuck up along one side, and the muscles of his stomach are outlined with a golden glow. In one hand, he has the open tupperware of leftover latkes, and in the other …

“Lee!” Gaara half-shouts, his voice still raw with sleep. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” 

Lee spins to him, eyes gone wide. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to wake you, I was just getting a midnight—!”

“I thought I told you to throw that away!” Gaara storms over, jabbing his finger at the offending tub of sour cream in his boyfriend’s other hand. The tub of sour cream that—horror of horrors—has one of Gaara’s lovingly hand-crafted latkes half protruding from its foul white depths, like a beautiful statue that’s been tossed carelessly into a garbage dump.

“I didn’t want to waste perfectly good food!” Lee yelps. “And I just wanted to try one. The lady at the store made it sound so good!”

“You throw that out right now.”

“I don’t know what you’re so worked up about!” Lee protests, and as Gaara gets closer, he realizes to his abject disgust that there’s already little flecks of white in the stubble on Lee’s upper lip. “It’s actually pretty tasty!”

“Give me that.” Gaara goes to snatch the tub from Lee’s hand, only for Lee to hold it up over his head, far out of Gaara’s reach. 

“Now, be reasonable.”

“I _am_ being reasonable.” Gaara grabs Lee’s bicep and tries to tug it down, only succeeding in dangling from Lee’s muscled arm like a particularly ridiculous primate. 

“You most certainly are not.” Lee’s eyes crease shut with mirth, a smile dancing across his lips. “You are being ridiculous.” 

“And you are _ruining my latkes_.” 

“I am doing no such thing!” 

Gaara throws his arms around Lee’s neck before bursting into giggles, and the struggle that ensues ends up with sour cream all over the kitchen floor and more than one latke crushed into even more of a pancake beneath Lee’s fallen body. 

As far as first fights go, Gaara thinks, wrestling a carton of sour cream out of Lee’s hands is, probably, an acceptable one.


End file.
